There are Worse Things Than Them Blowing Millions of Dollars

I’m pretty disappointed with the result of I-522. I’m not sure anyone has called anything yet, but after today’s 4:30 ballot drop, it’s still no at 54.33%. And yes, it still proves –as if further proof were needed — that rather depressingly, big money can buy elections in this state, at least initiatives. Still while the $22 million spent to get a victory can be thought of as dispiriting: breaking records of spending made a big difference in the end. Suck!

Still, I think there may be a small bit of hope in a staggeringly large number. First, given that only a tiny tiny ity bitty fraction was from in state, that’s money flowing in here. More important though is that they had to spend that much money. Sure, they won, but it might put some big money interests off in the future if they think they might have to spend that much on a campaign.

It may be a hollow victory in the face of an actual loss, but it’s better than nothing.

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What a shocker. The anti-522 campaign, which got its funding from out of state / in state at a rate of $22,000,000 to $550, or 99.9975/0.0025%, was able to outspend the pro-522 campaign by nearly 3-1. Hooray for out-of-state Big Money! Citizens United (sic) democracy in action.

It won’t cost them anything. It’s a cost of doing business they’ll pass on to consumers. In other words, you get to pay for their campaign to convince the ignorant masses to vote against knowing what’s in the food they’ll now raise prices on.

The exceptions in 522 didn’t make sense, and it would have been too confusing keeping track of whether something lacked a label because it was fine or because it had an exception. I’m in favor of the label, but across the board. I hope they write a better law next time so I can vote for it.

It might put some big money interests off in the future if they think they might have to spend that much on a campaign.

Riiiigggghht. You know how much $22 million (let alone the $5 mil or so most companies contributed) is to a global corporation like Monsanto or Pepsico (let alone a big bank or oil company)? Insignificant. It’s like someone with a $50,000 a year income buying a daily paper. Literally – do the math.

That’s how little it costs big companies like that to buy our democracy. The depressing part is not just that our politicians and laws are for sale, but that we sell them so fucking cheap.

It’s time for another Initiative. This one will set a lifetime cap on donations to WA state political campaigns by persons who are not registered voters in WA state. That lifetime limit will be $0. Any registered voter in WA who knowingly passes on out-of-state money to a WA political campaign commits a felony, resulting in disenfranchisement, and the loss of ability to make political donations.

# 3: That’s the good news from this election. We can take a page from Tim Eyman and re-write the bill a bit, and have it up for a vote again within a year’s time. And then we can keep that every year until it wins.

More to the point, the state legislature should take this as an indication that some 47% or so (someone else can do the math) want some form of labeling. The No on 522 campaign was effective by creating doubt by causing confusion over what it covered, but that’s just the sort of thing a legislative committee should be able to work out.

Of note is that off year elections traditionally favor the RETHUGS. Combine a new 522 on next year’s ballot (without wording changes) with a new ad campaign hammering away at who is funding the anti campaign and asking what they are hiding from us.

Despite the odious corporate manipulation of the election I thought there was and is an definitely anti-science streak of hysteria running through the anti-genetically modified organism movement. Global climate change is a well researched and proven theory while there is no such body of evidence or research proving anything but benefit from DNA/RNA recombination done by universities and even, ugh, Monsanto. Indeed, the very survival of billions of our fellow humans depends on the further development of the science. I know this is going to annoy the crap out of a lot of my fellow progressives, but the hysteria on the subject has caused localized famine in parts of India and Africa where the native farmers have been sold into the Euro-Green’s cult of naturalism. Anyone with a smattering of knowledge in the field of genetic manipulation knows that they can buy all the used equipment they need over the Internet to splice genes all they want and release the organisms into the wild. Luckily those critters have little chance of survival in the real world. Evolution is a harsh mistress. Even though it is possible to screw around with the genetic code of life we should be careful with the technology and try to keep it in the hands of responsible entities, especially universities. That is where the big corporations contract out their research, and I am happy they do. Eventually some jackass is going to find a way to do something horrible, but it won’t be a post-doc operating under strict lab protocols. The genie is out of the bottle and it can’t be put back. We have to stay out ahead of this science so there is no incentive for rogues to pervert the technology. As nice as it sounds, nobody is going to feed ten billion humans on organic vegetables and raw milk. That is a first world fantasy that we can afford to indulge, for the present.

My default vote on ANY Washington State initiative is NO. It’s up to the backers to convince me that there is a problem that must be addressed before I will vote YES. In this case the backers of I-522 did not manage to convince me. No case has been made that not having labels mandated for some genetically modified food stuffs is a real problem. As opposed to a psychological problem. The exception for Organic food never made sense to me. The label Organic does not indicate if the food has or has not been genetically modified.

Personally, I saw very few of the anti or pro I-522 ads. Also, for decades now I have had a great distrust of sound bite politicking. Very little information is disseminated (fire) but lots of obfuscating rhetoric (smoke).

The backers of I-522 are welcome to try again. My recommendation? Next time set up a voluntary system that marks Non-Gentically Modified food on the front of the package. Sort of like we do with Organic food labels.

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